Lunch At Your Desk

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Everyone has the occasional busy eat lunch at your desk day.

King Oscar Sardines, Vidalia onion, tomato and pumpernickel


Retrospectivly, it looks a bit gross, but tasted quite good.

Yours?

Gary--

Sardines & Onions?

Sounds great, but available only on my last day in this condo management office.

I'm not allowed to eat anything that can overpower the perfume on the ladies who live in the building.

shoot, I wish lunch at my desk was a rarity. I eat lunch at my desk at least 4 days a week, typically a turkey sandwich with swiss, and some chips, or some cold pizza. No time for a big spread/meal while I am chained to my desk from 7:00 a.m. until 5:00 p.m.

A rare treat is lunch @ Fabulous Noodles, Lao Sze Chuan, Katy's, Pricilla's, Paul's, or Portillos.

Today it's homemade Spinach and Brown Rice Gratin (recipe modified from the 101 Cookbooks blog) and a banana.

I wish lunch at my desk was a rarity! I think I actually left the building for lunch once a couple of weeks ago...

I pack lunches in my handy-dandy Laptop Lunch container. Strangely I do even have a picture of one of my lunches from a few weeks ago online. A friend was looking into getting a Laptop Lunch container and wanted to see what I usually packed in it. This is what my lunch looked like that day.

I also usually eat lunch at my desk but take a break while eating to catch up on the LTHForum. Today lunch was a Moroccan lentil salad with carrots and some mint and cherries and apricots from the farmer's market.

That's my kind of lunch. Although I agree, it's the kind of lunch you eat alone or with someone you love.

Suzy

Hellodali wrote:Today lunch was a Moroccan lentil salad with carrots and some mint and cherries and apricots from the farmer's market.

Yum! Please share the recipe, or point at it somewhere?

Thanks!

Another desk-eater here! (sadly)

Those sardines look GOOD. I have to eat that kind of thing with the husband is out - he can't stand the sight of them.

I'm pretty much always eating leftovers of whatever I made the night before, and my cube neighbors are always peeking over the cube wall to see what smells so good in my cube. Today, it was leftover pesto risotto with oodles of chard, and a bit of pork sausage, with fresh blueberries for dessert.

Tomorrow, its sauteed summer veggies - onion, zuchini, yellow squash, kohlrabi, chard, garlic - with a bit of tomato sauce, fresh basil, and served on top of ruby red jasmine rice, with some melted goat mozzarella on top. Who wants to come eat in my cube?!

Isn't a desk where one is supposed to eat lunch?

I usually eat lunch at my desk also. Not because I couldn't go somewhere else, but I don't like to pay to eat out for lunch (budget) and I eat earlier than my other coworkers. So I sit and surf the net.

Yesterday was a leftover cheeseburger and grilled zucchini. Today is mushroom and artichoke grilled pizza, it's got pesto sauce instead of red sauce too.

No pictures though.

inspired partly by Gary's post and partly by the fact that I have to leave early today for a doctor appointment, I brought a lunch to eat at my desk. I turned leftover grilled salmon into salmon salad, brought a box of whole grain crackers and some breath mints.

Should be delicious!

Suzy

I "brown bag" it mostly for economy, and partly because my leftovers are generally better than anything else around.
It's funny---the shot from Gary's orig. post reminded me that when I worked retail some 15 yrs. ago at Crate & Barrel, the building maintenance guys were an all Polish crew. We all shared a break room, and while the sales folks brought in sandwiches or Ameri-Thai take-out, the maintenance guys routinely brought tins of sardines, dense Polish rye and onions. They were relentlessly mocked, sotto voce, by the sales staff of recent grads small college now enrolled at Harrington. And I always wondered just how different the little debs thought their tuna salad sandwiches were, from the fork mashed sardines they thought were so "gross."

Lately my favorite desk lunch is a quasi-Middle Eastern collation of feta, olives, celery, carrot, and sticks, tomato, and sometimes some slices of salami or left over grilled meat with toasted pita. I just drizzle all the ingredients with good oil and a squeeze of lemon and let it marinate till lunch time. Not as fragrant as sardine and onion, while still packing a very spiritied flavor punch. It's also bright and colorful enough that people pass by and ask, "Oooh, what's that!" instead of "ewww gross!" as with either Indian/Pak. lunch, or mashed sardines, etc.

I'm also a big fan of various bean salads as a great one-dish desk lunch. Beans are so accomodating to whatever else is in the fridge from Saturday's trip to Green Market. Chop some fresh herbs, squeeze on fresh lemon and oil, and it all just takes care of itself.

Right now I"m munching some of those lovely, not-too-sweet, round, poppy-filled, sesame-topped cookies from Kayam bakery with my coffee (also brought from home, needless to say).

I also brownbag it almost every day for the sake of economy. I've been trying to work more sardines into my diet, so my lunch today was also inspired, at least in part, by Gary's post yesterday.

Ever since reading the Times article about the 11 foods I should be eating, which is thoroughly discussed here, I've been meaning to make a very simple sandwich recipe I found online that combines two of the eleven foods: beets and sardines. The beets have been holding me back because I haven't gotten around to cooking them to soften them up. I went through some sardines on crackers a couple of weeks ago and left the beets in the fridge. Well, inspired by Gary's picture, I prepared my healthy sandwich today. The recipe called for one medium beet chopped together with two sardines spread on buttered bread--I used Ukrainian rye. I'm not sure when you buy canned sardines what "two" means precisely since they seem to be chunks that are partial bodies of sardines.

As for how the sandwich was, the beet was good, but I think it needed more sardine. Next time I'm going to just use the entire can of sardines (drained). I may also throw in some capers as I chop everything together. The Ukrainian rye was a nice touch though.

jimwdavis wrote:I'm not allowed to eat anything that can overpower the perfume on the ladies who live in the building.

Fortunately for me, stinky lunches aren’t a problem since my office mate also partakes in stinky foods occasionally, and we have a large space with terrific ventilation. We work in the sun room of an old house with two walls of large windows that open onto green space—a setting that’s particularly pleasant in the summer, even if we are at our desks.

During the cold months, I bring leftovers for lunch almost without fail—lots of leftover stews and heavy pasta dishes. My schedule is such that in the summer I cook a lot less, and I’m often rushing out the door in the morning, bringing for lunch whatever I can throw in a bag. It’s not uncommon for my coworkers to find me in the kitchen chopping up a gigantic head of broccoli that I took quickly from the vegetable bin of my refrigerator.

Lunches at my desk are very simple. Yesterday, it was two pieces of toast topped with a few slices of Madrigal cheese, yellow “baby” carrots with red pepper hummos and a Bartlett pear. Today was a vegetable bin day—more yellow carrots, cucumber, radishes and tuna fish with a giant mug of jasmine tea.

I usually brown-bag it as well and often eat my desk while catching up on this forum. My favorite lunch to bring is leftovers from dinner—soup, pasta, or whatever I cooked last night. I enjoy the humble sandwich as well as long as I have good fresh rye bread. I’ve been known to open a can of King Oscar’s sardines in olive oil with my rye bread for lunch.

sdritz wrote:That's my kind of lunch. Although I agree, it's the kind of lunch you eat alone or with someone you love.

Suzy

I am reminded by Suzy’s comment of an experience my late mother had many years ago when she managed the office of a state agency. A particularly persistent, unhappy, and troublesome person had been complaining in the office for hours. My mother had been unable to satisfy him, whatever his issue was. Finally, she went out to lunch for Italian food and ate a dish with lots of garlic, which she loved. When she returned and found the man still there, she spoke to him again. He literally “got into her face.” Then he apparently smelled her garlicky breath, stepped back and waved his hand in front of his (and her) face, said “whew!” and left the office quickly. She always credited the garlic for getting rid of one difficult problem, and in our family a waving hand and “whew” still gets a laugh.

I love this thread! I eat lunch at my desk every day, and while it usually ends up as some kind of salad and protein, I'm always looking for something interesting. There are some great ideas here, altho I probably need to save the sardines for some alone time.

This week I tried a new (to me) recipe for cold sesame noodles from seriouseats.com. I've added some broccoli slaw, pea pods and leftover broccoli, and there's also a little leftover grilled chicken. Quite tasty!